Saturday, February 4, 2017

Explaining Industrial Engineering to Potential Students

1. NITIE is specially set up as a national institute for academic pursuits in Industrial engineering. In industrial engineering, NITIE is number one in India, and under the leadership of Prof Karuna Jain, a doctorate in industrial engineering, efforts are being made to get global recognition.

2. NITIE's industrial engineering graduates (PGDIE) were well received by the industry and we have CEOs of various companies from the earlier batches. Currently also, NITIE's IE graduates are in demand.

3. What is the focus of industrial engineering and how is it different from other branches of engineering and management?

4. Industrial engineering is a management subject with base in engineering. It is based on "Shop Management" and "Scientific Management" of F.W. Taylor. "The Art of Metal Cutting" by F.W. Taylor is the engineering back ground for the subject. Development of science, engineering alternatives and mathematical optimization are illustrated in this work.

5. Industrial engineer is a joint executive with engineering managers of various engineering departments.

6. Every function or activity has to be effective and efficient. Industrial engineers focus on efficiency.

7. Effectiveness is customer acceptance and efficiency determines the profit made by the company.

8. Managers have to get new products designed and existing products modified to get customer acceptance. Then they have to get processes in place to produce and distribute those products.

9. Industrial engineering redesign the products and processes on a continuous basis to identify and eliminate waste, improve productivity and decrease cost.

10. What are you going to learn in the Industrial engineering programme to improve efficiency and productivity, reduce cost and increase profit? I shall outline the subject streams in the programme. Each stream may have one to five subjects depending on the number of subjects in the curriculum and also the specialisation chosen.

11. We already mentioned products and processes and they are the most important outputs of engineering activity.

12. So I first mention Product Industrial engineering and Process Industrial engineering as the two important subjects streams in Industrial engineering curriculum. Both these streams are based on engineering knowledge of various engineering branches. In these two practice areas, industrial engineers have to come out with engineering alternatives to improve productivity and reduce costs.

13. All engineering alternatives proposed by industrial engineers have to be optimized to select the best alternative as the preferred solution to the issue at hand. Hence optimization through mathematical and statistical methods will be taught in the curriculum. This can be termed Industrial Engineering Optimization.

15. Human effort industrial engineering is a unique activity of IE. Engineers of other branches do not focus on human element. IEs redesign human effort to improve productivity of human resource. Along with productivity, IE is concerned with comfort of operators. Wherever industrial engineers are providing services, employees must feel very satisfied. The other point is industrial engineers have to learn to improve cooperation in the organization. IEs do not want conflict in the organizations.

16. Industrial engineering measurements of significance are work measurement, productivity measurement and cost measurement. Other measurements related to various engineering branches are anyway to be done to redesign products and processes.

17. The last area, I mention is productivity management. IEs are responsible for productivity management and they have to learn the complete management process and apply it to manage productivity.

18. Industrial engineering and productivity management provide you careers where you can contribute to tangible and measurable results in the company in the form of reduced costs and increased productivity. You can even become Joint CEO first and then CEO. They are exciting careers for effective services in the area of industrial engineering. I invite you all to compete for this education and career opportunity with all your intelligence and effort. Join us and we will form a team for the benefit of you, the society and the institute that includes faculty and administrative and service staff. My best wishes to all of you.